Thursday, October 20, 2005

Clever coding ninjas

Back during the Dot Com bubble there was a website called desktop.com that attempted to recreate the functions of an OS using nothing but clever code and a browser. It looked great but suffered from a few things. 1) Lack of apps 2) Slow and 3) No business model.

In time desktop.com went the way of so many other Dot coms. But fear not! All that is old is new again! A company called Goovy has created an pretty damn spiffy application in Macromedia Flash. The system is not only good looking, but it actually does things.

The psaudo-desktop features an email client (which can access POP3 accounts) a contacts manager (which can import contacts from Outlook) a Beta Calendar app, a News reader, a ton of games and other bells and whistles.

I have to say that from a visual and usability point of view this system is very slick. A clean interface without excessive animated crap. The mail client features right-mouse menus. Thgis might mean little to you, but if you've ever worked with flash you know that right-mouse clicks are verbotten. These clever monkeys made it work. Go check it out. (Make sure you hhave the latest flash plugin first) The account is free and its fun to play with. Leave your impressions in the comments.